WVNL
WVNL is the ION Television owned-and-operated station that serves the Detroit, Michigan market. Licensed to the nearby city of Ann Arbor, it broadcasts on Channel 31. History Early years The station first signed on the air on December 10, 1953, broadcasting from a transmitter in downtown Ann Arbor. After the release of the FCC's Sixth Report and Order lifted the freeze in 1952, the Commission decided to collapse Ann Arbor into the Detroit market. Being a UHF television station in a predominantly VHF market was extremely difficult in the 1950s. Almost all television sets that were sold were not capable of tuning UHF stations, and special converters and antennas were required to receive a UHF broadcast signal. Even with a converter, the picture quality was marginal at best. About half of the UHF stations in the country that debuted in the 1950s failed and shut down before the end of the decade. The FCC did not require television sets to include UHF tuning capability until 1964, as part of the All-Channel Receiver Act. WVNL was fortunate to obtain an affiliation with NBC, which had some problems during the early 1950s obtaining clearances for its complete schedule on its Detroit affiliate at the time, fellow UHF outlet and Taylor-based WASFD, which preferred to broadcast much local programming. WVNL also focused its programming on the Ann Arbor area to distinguish itself from the Detroit stations. It boasted the only newscast that focused on Washtenaw and Livingston County news. The going got more difficult, however, when VHF WGID signed on as the Detroit area's new NBC affiliate in 1956. WVNL was left with lower-rated syndicated programming (especially a large amount of country music and religious shows), as most of the more popular shows went to the larger Detroit stations. In 1961, it was declared that channel 31 had "suffered very substantial operating losses" from the beginning. The situation got only marginally better after the FCC required all-channel tuning. It tried to focus on its unique local programming including its Ann Arbor-based newscasts. As stated as WVNL marked its 25th anniversary in 1978, "Our local programming is geared to giving Ann Arbor what it wants – news, advertising, announcements and local shows all about Ann Arbor". The station struggled, however. Detroit TV vs. Ann Arbor TV The station also suffered from overall low ratings because it operated in the shadow of the Detroit market. Several studies indicated that even when viewers watched WVNL, they assumed they were watching WGID since both stations had a large amount of common programming from NBC. Furthermore, Ann Arbor was not a separate market for ratings purposes, but was only a small section of the Detroit market. Although WVNL's overall ratings were very poor in the Detroit market as a whole, it trounced the Detroit stations in Washtenaw and Livingston Counties. When WVNL signed on, it was Ann Arbor's only network affiliate. Had even one more network station signed on around the same time, or even a network affiliate in Howell, Brighton or anywhere else in Livingston County, the two counties may well have broken off from Detroit and formed either their own market or become part of the Lansing-Jackson market. This market would have been among the top 150 markets in the country. An Ann Arbor-Howell market would have been in the same situation as Baltimore, Maryland, a major market in its own right even though it is only 45 minutes from Washington, D.C. Other analogous situations would have been Topeka, Kansas, which is its own market even though stations from Kansas City, Missouri reach it fairly easily; and Saint Joseph, Missouri, which is served by commercial stations of its own and the Kansas City stations. Within WVNL's home state of Michigan, similar situations existed in Lansing and Jackson, where stations from Detroit (including channel 31), Flint-Saginaw-Bay City, and Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek can be received; and in Alpena, where residents of that city can receive most Traverse City-Cadillac-Sault Ste. Marie stations (along with many Flint-Saginaw-Bay City stations) despite having its own network affiliates. A similar situation also existed along the Michigan border in Toledo, Ohio, where most of the Detroit stations (including WVNL) can be received fairly well. As it was, WVNL was forced to compete with the Detroit stations with the odds stacked heavily against it, especially since it was in the shadow of WGID, one of NBC's strongest affiliates. It was also in constant jeopardy of losing its NBC affiliation. WGID's owner often tried to pressure NBC into pulling its affiliation from WVNL, so that WGID did not have to compete with another NBC affiliate in the same market. Later years On June 30, 1988, WVNL's affiliation with NBC finally ended, but it was only to be replaced by a new affiliation agreement with Fox, which was already in the Detroit market on charter owned-and-operated station WLTY. In 1992 ValueVision, a company specializing in home shopping programming, bought the station. Immediately, speculation arose that the station would cancel its newscasts; however ValueVision chose to keep the station's news programs, and had rebranded WVNL as "Southeast Michigan's News Station," though the quality was uneven at best. The station then started to identify itself as serving Ann Arbor and Detroit, but news coverage was still focused on Washtenaw and Livingston Counties for the most part. With the launch of the new branding, the station expanded its 6 p.m. newscast to one hour, but dropped its weekend newscasts. In the fall of 1994, the station launched a 5 p.m. newscast called "Your News". Finally, in 1995, Paxson Communications – another company that specialized in home-shopping programs, though of the infomercial variety (and whose founder also launched the Home Shopping Network; although Paxson had owned a couple of major network affiliates years before) – purchased WVNL. The station abruptly dropped all local news programming after February 26. Later that fall, the station began branding itself as "Fox 31", even though its affiliation with the network was set to end on December 31, 1995. As a result, with no Fox programming, such as The X-Files, Married... with Children and The Simpsons to attract viewers, ratings plummeted to lows never before seen in the station's history. For the next two years-and-a-half, WVNL began carrying Paxson's infomercial service inTV (or the Infomail Television Network). WVNL became a charter station of Paxson's new family-oriented broadcast network Pax TV when it launched on August 31, 1998 and carried the network's entire schedule, with practically no local programming. An Ann Arbor-based newscast was briefly resurrected in June 2001 when Paxson entered into a local marketing agreement with, ironically, WGID, as part of an overall corporate deal between Paxson and NBC. WGID opened an Ann Arbor studio and produced nightly 6:30 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts (as Pax 31 News), featuring WGID reporters assigned to stories in Washtenaw and Livingston Counties. Weather reports were supplied by WGID's meteorologists in that station's downtown Detroit studio. WVNL dropped the newscasts upon Pax TV's rebranding as i: Independent Television on June 30, 2005, as Paxson had decided to discontinue its news share agreements with NBC's stations. What became Washtenaw & Livingston News migrated to a local origination channel on MediaOne's Ann Arbor system, where it aired until May 30, 2008. Gallery WVNL_1976.jpg|WVNL logo from 1976 WVNL_1983.jpg|WVNL logo from 1983; promoting NBC's Be There campaign WVNL_1988.jpg|WVNL logo from 1988; used when it began it's affiliation with Fox WVNL_1993.jpg|WVNL logo from 1993 WVNL_1998.jpg|WVNL logo used from 1998 to 2005 Category:ION Television affiliates Category:Ion Television affiliates Category:Channel 31 Category:Detroit Category:Ann Arbor Category:Michigan Category:Former i affiliates Category:Former Pax TV affiliates Category:Television channels and stations established in 1953 Category:Former NBC affiliates Category:Former NBC affiliated stations Category:Former Fox network affiliates Category:Former Fox affiliates Category:Former FOX affiliates